Pic of the Day

Things have been a little rough at Chez Bean. Thanksgiving was wonderful. We had seventeen grown-up friends and relatives and all their kids. There was much food, frivolity, and gratitude to God. The evening was a huge success largely due to the indefatigable ball-and-chain and my mom (who came in from out of town and made the turkey).

We’re still recovering. I’m doing my best on the turkey leftovers. For dinner tonight, I made myself a turkey sandwich with larger than necessary sides of yams and parsnips. (Still have plenty of both.)

What does this have to do with the PotD? Stay with me.

Over the weekend, we ran out of Diet Coke. Not a big deal, typically, but we were way too busy to go get some, and I’m the only one who drinks it with any regularity. Now, caffeine is a fairly important part of my day. I only drink two or three caffeinated beverages a day, but without them I’m tired and cranky. Some people are mean drunks; I’m mean when withdrawing from caffeine. (Please don’t comment with a lecture about caffeine withdrawal. I know; I’m a doctor.) So my typical schedule is: a single cup of coffee in the morning, a Diet Coke with lunch, and then sometimes another DC in the afternoon. I’m the opposite of a coffee connoisseur. I drink coffee strictly for the caffeine. I don’t know bad coffee from good coffee, and am not interested in learning the difference. I drink Folgers Instant because it takes me seconds to make. I drink it as a warm liquid just because it’s a little more pleasurable than chewing on the crystals.

So at lunch I thought that I should make myself a yummy cold coffee drink to replace my usual caffeine vehicle. Here’s what I did in case you want to cut and paste it to your recipe files:

Folgers instant coffee, 1 teaspoon, in a coffee cup
Add just enough hot water to dissolve entirely (fill the cup no more than an inch deep) and stir
Pour into a tall glass full of ice cubes
Add Crystal Geyser lemon flavored sparkling mineral water until the glass is full

I thought I was making a yummy lemon flavored iced coffee drink. What I made was hideous. The initial taste had the bitterness of unsweetened coffee followed what-seemed-like-weeks-later by a gnarly lemon fizz that nearly resulted in the Puke of the Day. ball-and-chain saw it on my desk and thought it was root beer, so she had a sip. Not good.
- served up by Doctor Bean @ 7:43 PM